Take India's western coast, from Mumbra on the outskirts of Mumbai to Bhatkal and all the way to Kasaragod in Kerala. Here, three trends are visible. One, of youth leaving Indian shores for the warzones of the Middle East, notably Syria and Yemen, for jihadist activity. Then, there are groups like the now largely defanged Indian Mujahideen whose operatives such as Yasin Bhatkal—who used to live in the same neighbourhood as the Armar brothers before he went to Pakistan—go overseas and then return to engage in terrorist activities on Indian soil. Finally, in Kerala, the trend has largely been to simply pack up and leave for foreign shores, never to come back or carry out attacks back home. The best example are the dozens who left Kerala and 'settled' in Nangarhar province of Afghanistan—a bleak part of that country which is under the control of ISIS, which competes with Al Qaeda for influence in Eastern Afghanistan. Their sojourn in 'paradise', as they described it to their families back home in Kerala, often ends after American drone strikes that often kill people by the dozen in one go. Open had reported earlier that Kerala has been an attractive hiring turf ground for Islamist groups. The Lashkar-e-Taiba's former representative in south India, Thadiyantavide Nazeer, was from the northern district of Kannur. Nazeer and his men were accused of recruiting youths from Kerala for the LeT. The likes of Mohiyuddin Nadukkandiyil Karassery, a Kozhikode-based scholar popularly known as MN Karassery, has attributed such a trend to the "perverse assertion" of Muslim identity and the outcome of a decades-long indoctrination campaign unleashed by the Jamaat-e-Islami. The religious group has over time radicalised Muslim youths of the state through hardline teachings of "Abul A'la Maududi and Hassan al- Banna, who are divisive and purveyors of monotheism and the Muslim nation theory," as Karassery had told Open in an interview ('Going Radical in Kerala', October 16th , 2015). Besides, Kerala was in the spotlight after the NIA disclosed that the 22 people who had reportedly left the country to join the ISIS—among them 13 men, six women and three children—were from this high-literacy-boasting state where Muslims are relatively prosperous. Of this group, 11 were from a small town in Kasaragod called Padanna. Among the 22, four were converts to Islam from Christianity, and one from Hinduism (see 'The Call of Jihad', April 28th, 2017).

Bhatkal

God’s Recruits

A Place Called Bhatkal

The Name that Spells Terror